


This Rough Magic

by mugsandpugs



Category: Wolverine (Movies)
Genre: Anal Sex, Bath Sex, Bittersweet Ending, Blow Jobs, Canon Compliant, Familial Love, Found Family, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, Logan (X-Men) - Freeform, M/M, Pre-Movie, Torture, True Love, a little angsty, canon-compliant character death, rim jobs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-05 15:06:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10310933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mugsandpugs/pseuds/mugsandpugs
Summary: The story leading up to the events ofLogan-How Caliban is hired on, and how quickly his and Logan's work environment becomes complicated once feelings enter the mix.





	1. The First Day

_Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows._  
  
William Shakespeare, The Tempest 

. Caliban . 

Working for Logan was nothing like what Caliban had expected. 

He was, at heart, a nervous creature of habit. Emerging from his home- which was little more than an Albuquerque sewer system- donned head to toe in protective burlap gear, goggles firmly in place over his sensitive eyes, he couldn't help but feel a pang of loss for the place he knew he’d never see again. It wasn't much, but it was _his;_ the place he'd dwelled for years after the... _after._ Now he was being taken away, and though being gainfully employed was a step up in his life, he found half his heart wanting to scuttle right back into the safe, quiet drains. 

"That all your stuff?" Logan nodded at the leather suitcase, the old-fashioned kind, wheeless and bound with straps rather than with a zipper. Caliban nodded, the brim of his hat fluttering slightly in the blast of hot wind, and tried not to emit a squeak of surprise as the big man grabbed the case containing all his worldly possessions worth taking- some clothes, some books, a paper envelope of his dwindling cash supply- and placed it with surprising gentleness into the boot of the limousine. 

_Trunk,_ Caliban reminded himself sternly, walking around the long black vehicle to the passenger side door. _American's say "trunk," not "boot."_

"There's water in the backseat," Logan grunted as his new employee buckled the seatbelt over his heavy burlap over-shirt, nostrils flaring subtly in Caliban's direction the only hint that he was being identified by scent. He found the thought oddly comforting; he wasn't the only freak in the car. He was going away with the only mutants left in the world; going to take care of the man who had killed all the rest. 

The feeling of comfort evaporated at that thought, and he cleared his throat, shifting on the hard leather seat and hearing it creak under his weight. He wished Logan would turn the air conditioning on in the limo, but didn't dare reach to do it himself, and instead distracted himself studying the high-tech gadgets and gizmos on the dashboard, monochrome buttons and switches with functions he couldn't begin to identify. Vehicles had come a long way since last he'd been inside one. 

"S'gonna be a long ride," Logan mumbled; the last words he spoke for many hours of highway, though he did, mercifully, turn on both the radio and the air conditioning after a while. 

Logan looked rough with a two-day beard grizzling his cheeks, deep shadows forming sideways parenthesis underneath his pouched, tired eyes. He didn't smell the freshest, despite the neatness of his polyester uniform; in fact, he smelled... _wrong._ A wrongness that came from the inside, something that a bath couldn't fix. 

"Keep your eyes to yourself, bub," Logan suggested, staring straight ahead at the long stretch of thin highway enveloped by brown desert as far as the eye could see with no real heat in his tone. Mortified, Caliban quickly swiveled to look out of his window instead; if Logan had merely been guessing that he was staring through his tinted goggles, he'd just given himself away. 

"Sorry." His voice was very hoarse, so he quickly twisted to take a bottled water from the pack behind him and freed a hand from his sleeve, only long enough to twist the cap off. This time, it was Logan's eyes that strayed to his bone-white wrist, then quickly snapped back to the road. He wondered if Logan felt as uncertain about this arrangement as he did. Caliban took a nervous sip and focused on remaining quite still, his more animalistic senses, as well as human logic, warning him that sudden movements were not appreciated here. 

The wrongness of the mutant's scent was later chased away by an overwhelming barrage of heady perfumes when, another hour and one gas-and-piss-stop later, they came to a halt in front of a small, free-standing stucco house in Big Spring, Texas. A crowd of giggling teenage girls in a rainbow of tulle and taffeta formal gowns emerged from inside, followed by a harried-looking man who might have been one of their fathers. The man gave Logan a thick wad of crisp bills and signed his name on the clipboard that he was offered when Logan slid from the driver's' seat and held the back doors open for his passengers. 

The father said something that made Logan tip his head back and laugh, a smile on his face that disappeared the second the man returned inside, highlighting how false it had been. So the gruff-and-tough mutant had learned a thing or two about getting along with customers; how interesting. Feigning joviality seemed most unlike him, from the little that Caliban knew. 

The girls paid them no mind on the relatively short drive, which Caliban appreciated, and simply talked amongst themselves about who was "doing" whom after the prom; evidentially they'd told their parents that they were all attending the dance together, but had made secret plans to later pair off with boys. 

Sometimes he regretted having such a sensitive sense of hearing. 

The hotel parking lot was quite crowded, but as Logan circled the drop-off zone, valets in nice suits opened the doors and offered gloved hands to the girls, who giggled and allowed themselves to be helped to their feet. 

"Vicki," Logan called, lowering the divider for the first time, and a chestnut-haired beauty in a plum-colored gown stopped as he handed over the clipboard and a pen. "Sign here please." 

The teenager gave them a distracted smile and a loopy signature on the "Successful Drop-Off" line, dotting her _i’s_ with hearts before thanking Logan and hastening to join her friends. 

_"Teenagers,_ Caliban sighed, shaking his head and letting his smile be heard in his voice. "I don't envy their parents." 

He'd hoped for a likewise friendly response from Logan, then felt his insides shrivel when the man only shot him an irritated glance. He resisted the urge to apologize, though for what he wasn't sure. He didn’t try to make conversation again until, the sky now black and star-peppered, they pulled into another gas station. 

"I need to piss," was all Logan said. "Get something to eat; your growling stomach is starting to bother me." 

He held out four twenties from the stack he'd been paid for driving the merry prom-goers; his first of many allowances. Caliban blinked owlishly at the funds, lifting his hand and taking them after a beat too long had passed. 

"Grab me a hot dog, too," Logan requested. 

A little numbly, the albino mutant did as directed. 

. Logan . 

Caliban had nodded off sometime between Odessa and Sanderson, tipping until his cheek was pressed to the cool glass of the window. He’d deigned to remove his hat, goggles, and hood while eating, and hadn’t bothered to put them back on, no longer fearing the sun’s dangerous rays. Logan supposed they had another forty-five minutes to go before they reached border crossing, and then another two hours before they reached the smelting plant. 

The empty, straight road ahead of them contained no cars, and Logan’s eyes strained mightily from staring at nothing but painted yellow lines for hours on end. He allowed himself the luxury of looking away now, his gaze instead falling on the other mutant’s peacefully sleeping face. It’d been a shock- no, a _miracle_ when the tracker contacted him, calling him from an Albuquerque payphone. He’d thought, initially, that it was a trap- assuming all good things were traps was at this point in time his modus operandi. But the more Caliban talked, the more he believed him: the tracker had seen him and Charles, and rather than wishing to report the illegally-smuggled weapon of mass destruction to the authorities, he instead wished to simply be in contact with his own kind. They’d been on opposite sides of a war, back when there were enough of them to _have_ a war. Now there were no sides. Only survival on the brink of extinction. 

Logan had all but begged Caliban to work for him. “I need you to help me,” were not words he said lightly, but said them he had. And Caliban understood. If he was planning on betraying them, well, that was just a risk Logan had to take. He was out of options. 

He let Caliban sleep as they finally pulled into the long queue of trucks and cars outside border crossing, then finally put a tentative hand on the other man’s shoulder when they neared their turn. “Wake up, ‘Casey Jacobs,’” he said, putting heavy infliction on their agreed-upon invented name. Logan had gone to the same man who made his own fake ID and paid over a good lump of cash to have a second made, good enough to pass inspection, and signed doctor’s paperwork explaining ‘Casey’s _xeroderma pigmentosum,_ a rare human disease that made sun exposure unbearable and would hopefully get border patrol off their backs without too many questions. 

Caliban woke with a start, flinching from Logan’s hand, and Logan quickly removed it. He wasn’t much a fan of being touched these days, either. 

“Right,” he said, when he’d regained his composure, and made to pull the wallet Logan had given him from his pocket. His accent was softer when he was groggy. It reminded Logan of Charles’. “I’ve never been to Mexico,” he said thoughtfully. 

“Well, act like you have. Like this is an everyday thing. Hey Sam!” He greeted the familiar patrol officer. 

“Hey James. Who’s your friend?” 

The patrol officer was staring at Caliban, bushy eyebrows knitted together high on his forehead. Logan supposed he couldn’t blame him; to the unprepared, Caliban was quite a sight. Bald as a billiard and pale as a pearl, with enormous and rather unnerving glacier-blue eyes, he didn’t quite look _real._

“He’s my driving company’s new VP,” Logan explained. “I’m giving him a ride to headquarters.” 

Sam quickly regained his manners - Logan could almost see the word _albino_ being filed away in his mind- and offered a smile. “Let’s see some ID, son.” 

“Of course sir,” Caliban said, and reached over Logan to pass Sam the card and medical paperwork through the open window. Logan saw that his hands were trembling slightly and shot him a _calm-the-fuck-down_ glare. 

“An Englishman, huh?” Sam inquired, responding to the accent. “How long have you been on this side of the pond?” 

“Almost twenty years, sir,” Caliban explained. “I only lived in London until primary school.” 

“Accent’s mighty strong,” Sam observed, looking up from the identification suspiciously. “Usually those fade over time.” 

Caliban’s knee gave a compulsory jerk of nerves at this, and, with a soft growl, Logan pressed his palm to the bony joint to keep him still. _Strike ‘cool under pressure’ from his resume,_ he thought, rather sarcastically. 

“I suppose it’s just a way of keeping home with me wherever I go,” Caliban replied, voice rising in pitch. 

Sam’s thick lips shunted to one side in a thoughtful expression, clearly thinking Caliban a bit of a weirdo, but handed the albino man his fake identification back just the same. “You’re clear to go. See you around, James.” 

“Bye, Sam.” 

They followed the smooth road in silence until the lights of the border crossing had long disappeared from the rearview mirrors. Then both men let out twin sighs, and Logan removed his hand from Caliban’s leg. 

“You won’t have to do that again,” Logan told him, breaking the tense silence. “Nobody comes to where we’re going, trust me.” 

“Well if that horror movie-like line doesn’t inspire the utmost confidence, I don’t know what will,” Caliban replied, so dryly Logan wasn’t immediately certain he’d been joking. He felt the side of his mouth twist in an involuntary grin. 

. Caliban . 

Caliban re-donned his protective gear the moment black night-sky faded to the gray of approaching dawn. The vastness of America- both Northern and Southern continents- never ceased to amaze him. They’d been driving for almost twenty-four hours and still his inner radar told him there were miles to go before they reached the third existing mutant: Charles Xavier. 

After multiple incidents had passed, leaving civilians and mutants alike dead by the hundreds- the man had been declared a menace to society and his death had been ordered. 

He _remembered_ the incidents with such vivid ferocity that it made his stomach clench in knots just thinking about it. Being frozen in time, a mighty pressure encasing him like a wall, crushing the very breath from his lungs for minutes at a time. He still didn’t understand why he’d survived when so many others did not. The first time it happened, he’d sobbed in confusion and relief alike when it finally ceased, tears raining down his face even before he noticed that some of his colleagues failed to rise back up to their feet- that they never would again. 

The last time it’d happened had been almost two years ago. News reports confirming Xavier’s death, the death of _all_ mutants, and genetically modified produce ensuring that no further mutants would ever be born, promoted worldwide celebration. He knew the truth: Charles had always been the brightest star on his conscious, dimming all other mutants by comparison with the sheer light of his abilities. This light had not snuffed out in the slightest. There were still three such lights in the world: himself, Logan, and Charles Xavier himself. 

He only wished he’d had the courage to call Logan sooner. 

Now, they jostled on a long stretch of desert; no longer was the road smooth and paved, but rough and brambled, grown over with desert vegetation over time. The homing beacon on Xavier’s presence seemed to pulse in Caliban’s brain. _Ten miles away. Six miles away._

They stopped when the professor was only three miles away. Logan put the limousine in park. 

“Normally I walk the last ten miles or so,” he explained. “It’s not good for the limo to be off-road. You think you can walk the rest of the way?” 

What else could Caliban do but nod? 

He took another water bottle from the pack- the plastic felt hot in his hand- and let himself out of the limousine. Stuffing a white paper bag in his suit pocket, Logan followed suit, going back to the trunk to heft Caliban’s suitcase easily over his shoulder, then began walking. 

Standing side-by-side for the first time, Caliban noticed with some interest that he was a little bit taller than Logan, though not even a fraction as brawny. His long legs kept up without much difficulty to the other man’s powerful stride, though he lost time in picking his way carefully around the fuzzy cholla cactuses that Logan barely seemed to notice. Did having healing capabilities make you indifferent to pain? 

So overwhelmed was he by the ever-closer sense of Charles that he barely spoke on the long walk to the abandoned smelting factory Logan had smuggled the professor to, and he even broke into a bit of a run when the white domes came into view. The draw was magnetic, an intensity he had never known before, though he did stop at what must constitute as a front door and wait for Logan to catch up, in-bred politeness eclipsing his own racing heart. 

“Eager, huh?” Logan mumbled, pushing his way through heavy curtains, and held them aside for Caliban to follow. It was dark and swelteringly hot inside, and, grumbling, Logan set down Caliban’s suitcase and knelt beside a fuze box, poking and prodding at switches until, with a loud whirr, multiple fans and lights all powered up at once. 

The space they were inside now must once have been a front office for the plant, but had been converted to what, going by smell alone, was now Logan’s living quarters. There was a table, an icebox, a microwave blinking the time as 12:00 AM despite it being just past eight, a radio and television, and a rickety twin-sized bed with messy covers. Several crates served as countertops and storage. 

Caliban barely took any of this in as he immediately made his way towards the second door in the back. Charles was on the other side of that door, his light so bright it was almost blinding in Caliban’s brain. Logan’s light was plenty bright itself, and it hummed just on the edge of his consciousness, closer, but so familiar now it barely triggered notice unless he intentionally focused on it. 

“Logan?” called a frail and almost fearful-sounding voice. “Is that you?” 

“Yeah, Charles.” Kicking off his shoes and flinging his uniform’s jacket and belt onto the bed, Logan walked confidently forward in a white tank-top that strained generously off his rippling abdomen, muscled shoulders bulging at his sides. 

“I thought you’d… left me… to die.” There was something so nakedly vulnerable and _hurting_ in the old man’s voice that Caliban cast his eyes down, certain he wasn’t meant to be hearing it. 

_”No, Charles,”_ Logan sounded exasperated and exhausted. It fully occurred to Caliban then that Logan had been awake for over two solid days on the journey to collect him; possibly longer. “We talked about this, remember? I had to go get a new mutant, to help me out so you never have to be alone anymore.” 

“A new…” 

Something flashed in Caliban’s mind, bright and shining as a tiny silver fish in a shallow pool. Such a warmth accompanied it that it made his heart flutter in his chest, and he knew with a small spike of alarm that Charles was _looking into his head._ It was gone as soon as it had come, leaving him once more alone with his thoughts. 

“Oh, I see!” No longer morose, there was only delight in Charles’ tone. “Come in, Caliban! Let me see you! It’s been too long since I saw anyone’s face but that snappish old grizzly bear.” 

Logan grunted, kicking his trousers off and throwing them in a crumpled heap on the floor before sitting heavily on his bed. “You guys mind if I-” he was interrupted by a huge yawn. “If I-” 

“Go ahead and sleep,” Caliban replied, with more confidence than he had felt in years. “I’ll take it from here.”


	2. The First Year

. Caliban . 

Settling into the role of unwed housewife just felt like a natural extention of Caliban’s life; like his arrival had been fate waiting for him to accept its call. 

Logan himself was an easy roommate, by virtue of being away a good majority of the time. The downside to his job as limo driver was simply that his schedule was never quite predictable; different on a day-to-day basis. He was gone for long stretches of time, wherein Caliban was free to rest on the bed they took turns sharing, or to do chores at his leisure. Logan had been running himself ragged trying to both work a demanding job _and_ care for such an extraordinary patient as Charles that there was little Caliban could do _wrong_ in his eyes; any help provided was an enormous benefit. 

Which wasn’t to say he took the job lightly. He too felt intrinsically drawn to give 100% in his daily activities. Or at least eighty percent. Seventy-five on a bad day. 

Charles was easily the best _and_ worst part of the job. Caring for the old man, cooking his meals, changing his clothes, keeping him clean with sponge baths, helping him to the toilet, and leading him in regular small exercises wasn’t so bad. Charles was an engaging companion, and on more lucid days when the brilliant mind of Professor X shone through, the old man would regale the young mutant with fascinating stories of days long past. 

The days where dementia took the forefront were harder, when Charles spoke to audiences that weren’t there to hear him, or couldn’t recognize Caliban and shouted horrible things at him. The worst was when he forcibly dug around inside Caliban’s head, extracting thoughts and memories like a child ravaging a nursery during a tantrum. Those episodes always left Caliban shaken and sometimes physically ill, though Charles was always so gentle and genuinely sorry after he’d realized what he’d done that remaining angry at him was an impossibility. 

Some days, when Charles’ mind was clear enough to remember all that had happened, he would curl up in a ball and sob, so heart-broken that nothing Caliban said was any consolation at all. Caliban hated to see him this way, and would rub his back and his hands and insist “It’s alright, it’s alright,” until the old man was too exhausted to weep any longer. 

When Charles slept, Caliban did the washing and tidying- even, twice a week or so, braving the outside world to clean the interior and exterior of the limousine to keep it shiny and ready for customers. He filled baskets with dirty laundry and wrote shopping lists and, eventually, Logan would come home with bags of groceries and laundromat-cleaned clothes. 

His cooking skills were rusty and rudimentary, but Logan never complained no matter what he served. (Charles, on the other hand, would loudly voice his dissent should he feel strongly opposed). 

Now free to work full-time, Logan was bringing home more money than ever. True to his word, a small cut of the proceeds went into Caliban’s pocket, although having taken over the budgeting, Caliban was more than aware that not all of Logan’s earnings were accounted for; the man was squirrelling a percentage of each job away, for what, Caliban hadn’t quite worked out yet. He didn’t feel like he was allowed to ask. 

Mutant or not, the man had balls of steel to keep smuggling drugs- even well-intentioned but illegally purchased prescription medication- over the Mexican border, though Caliban hated being the one to inject Charles with the drugs that made him so foggy and compliant and dimmed his light in Caliban’s brain to only the smallest of silver orbs. That job, at least, he tended to leave for Logan. 

One evening, when the cursed sun was finally dipping below the horizon and blessed night prepared to take its place over the desert, Caliban propped open the door between their lodgings and wheeled the professor over to his and Logan’s lodgings. It was a rare occasion, where all three men were awake, alert, and present, and he thought it would do them some good to enjoy supper together. 

“Breakfast for dinner, how delightful!” Charles beamed when a tray of waffles and bacon was slid onto his lap. “You take such good care of us, Caliban; doesn’t he, Logan?” 

Logan, who was eating at the table, glasses perched on his nose while scrolling absently through his phone, looked up at the sound of his name. “Oh. Yeah.” Then, sensing that more of a response was expected: “This is good.” 

It was the smallest of praise; barely a compliment at all, but Caliban felt a flutter in his stomach just the same. He tried to will it away. He tried to will all but the most basic observations of Logan’s presence away, lest Charles pick up on them more than he undoubtedly already had. 

Tonight was not to be Caliban’s night. 

_”Good?!_ It’s delicious! And such a joy to be eating together.” 

“Mmm.” Logan’s response was non-committal as his left thumb tapped away on the smartphone’s screen, his right hand reaching for another piece of bacon. 

“With the amount of time Caliban spends gazing at your arse, you’d think you’d at least give him the time of day to thank him to his face!” 

Caliban felt his blood run cold in sheer mortification. He hoped with all his soul that Logan had been tuning the old man out as much as he looked to be doing, and shot Charles a desperate, _please shut up_ face that the old man did not seem to notice. 

“Does he?” Logan glanced up, eyebrow quirked and eyes still looking far away as he was dragged back from whatever information on his phone had been absorbing him so. He looked from Charles’ innocently sincere face to Caliban’s own panicked one, made a small “hm,” noise, and returned to his beloved internet. 

Charles let out a scoff of indignation, gesturing a syrupy hand in Logan’s direction. “Hopeless,” he told Caliban. “He’s absolutely hopeless. These waffles turned out so perfectly brown; what’s your secret?” 

. Logan . 

The plan was starting to come together. Logan was only a few jobs away from having enough money to put a downpayment on a ship. He’d been researching boats, ships, and sailing for days, and found his mind continually returning to the sea every time a sharp pain from somewhere on his body- and there was no shortage of locations- made his drinking hand shake a little. Every bottle of Jack he _didn’t_ purchase was another ten dollars towards the _Sunseeker._ It added up. 

The weight of the adamantium bullet in his pocket was a permanent reminder of how things would go. _First: Buy a ship. Second: Put Charles on the ship. Third: Take care of Charles, far away from human civilization, until he passes peacefully and happily on his own time. Lastly: blow his own brains out._

It was the best plan because it was _his_ plan, the one sure ambition he’d ever had. It was, he supposed, a better way to go than most. The only loose end it left was Caliban, but Logan was sure he’d be fine, free to exist as the last mutant until his own time ran out. Whenever guilt threatened to rear its ugly head, he quashed down firmly. Caliban was his employee, not his responsibility. 

After the dinner plates were washed and he’d carried Charles to bed, Logan stepped out for a wash in the outside basin of recycled and treated rainwater. Little more than a glorified sponge-bath, he found himself wishing for a hot shower. Running water was a luxury they no longer had, and although he was used to it, he resented its absence. He filled the tub and stripped naked, scrubbing the road funk off his body with the same bar soap he used to clean his hair. He shook off like a dog as he climbed out, and then tipped the dirty water out of the tub, leaving it empty for Caliban to use. Then, feeling refreshed, he dressed and came back inside, sinking onto the bed and praying for his body to let him rest, just this once. 

It was hours later when he again opened his eyes, judging from how dark it had gotten outside his window. He groaned as he sat up and found he didn’t feel any more rested than he had before, but too awake to even consider going back to sleep. He supposed he might as well do something useful and rotate the limo’s tires; it’d been six months since he’d changed the oil, too. 

He stepped through the curtains and started to walk around the side of the smelting plant, to the small shed where he kept his tools, then froze in place. Reclining in the tin tub were the long white limbs of Caliban, looking serene in the moonlight reflected on water. His wet white skin looked soft as buttermilk and his head was tipped back, eyes closed blissfully. He looked like something out of an illustration in a very old book. Logan’s throat ran dry and he tried to take a silent step back, feeling as though he’d stumbled across something very private. 

Unfortunately for him, Caliban _was_ the tracker mutant. He sat up abruptly, spinning around so hard that half the water sloshed out in all directions, his enormous eyes looking silver in the dark as he stared at the Wolverine. 

“Sorry, sorry,” Logan put both palms up in a _no-threats-here!_ gesture. “I didn’t know you were out here. I’ll go back inside.” 

Cringing at himself, he made to retreat farther, but Caliban was already reaching for the towel he’d set on the nearby worktable, folded neatly on top of a hammer and half a dozen screwdrivers. He threw it over himself as he stood, and Logan froze in place. Caliban at midnight was something quite different than Caliban at noon: there was something glowing about him; authoritative and unafraid. The night world was _his_ world, and all other inhabitants were intruders. 

He looked, in that moment, inhuman. _Extra-_ human, like the mutant he was, and Logan couldn’t tear his eyes away. 

Then Caliban spoke, and the illusion shattered until he was just plain old, goofy and awkward Caliban once more. 

“You were having nightmares.” It wasn’t a question, so Logan didn’t answer, although he was correct. Every moment alone with his own thoughts was a nightmare these days. 

“And you’re sick. I can smell it, you know. I didn’t understand at first, but the metal inside you is… rotting? Or you’re rotting around it.” 

Again, it wasn’t a question. 

“Charles says you’re dying.” Caliban stepped out of the tub, carefully, and stood barefoot in the patchy grass that grew in the shade behind the Plant. 

This sent a hot surge of annoyance through Logan’s gut. The old man had no right to go through their heads and yank their secrets out, forcing them out into the open when they were all doing a perfectly fine job of ignoring the obvious. 

“Charles also spends half his time convinced he’s in the 1950’s giving a press release, what’s your point?” he grunted, and made to step around the tub and towards his limousine. Caliban reached out and caught him with a hand that was stronger than Logan remembered. Was the moon energizing him? 

“I’m tired of this, Logan!” Caliban turned to him with fire in his arctic-sea eyes. “I want you to be open with me. Where are you putting all that money you earn on your shifts that you don’t bring home any receipts for? It can’t all be drug money!” 

“My money isn’t your concern!” Half of Logan wondered whether he shouldn’t just admit the truth; Caliban was three quarters of the way to piecing it all together himself anyway. The other half, the Wolverine half, was angry that this little pipsqueak of a mutant was throwing his weight around like he thought he was the boss. 

“Caring about you isn’t _my concern?!”_

The raw intensity of the admission quieted some of the hot-tempered anger Logan was feeling, replacing it with surprise. He wondered if there was any merit to what Charles had said earlier, if Caliban really did give half a damn. The righteous anger in his impossible eyes- whirlpool eyes, threatening to grab him and spin him around and throw him on a different track than he’d started on, watched him darkly, gauging his responses. 

Logan reached for Caliban, a brief nervous twang in his gut as he did so, fearing that he was reading this all wrong. If he was, Caliban still didn’t protest as, hands on his waist, he pulled the tall man closer. 

“Cal?” he tried, and cleared his throat. Talking wasn’t his strong suit. He wondered, if Caliban wanted him to fuck off, whether he’d say so. 

A cool hand touched his, tentative as the brush of a moth’s wing, not pushing him away, but holding on. It was answer enough. Caging the delicate fingers in his own, he brought Caliban’s hand up to his mouth and pressed his lips to the center of his lily-white palm. He tried to place an apology he could never speak aloud into kiss. _I'm sorry I'm an asshole. I'm sorry I dragged you here, that I keep things from you._ It wasn't enough, but the hitch of breath trapped in Caliban’s lungs sent a familiar interest warming his blood. 

“You want this, huh?” he confirmed, releasing the hand to instead take the man’s narrow hips and squeezed them. 

“What _is_ this, for clarification?” Caliban asked, sounding a bit worked up himself. He certainly smelled interested. 

“I don’t know,” Logan admitted. “You could keep yelling at me, if you want.” 

Caliban released a surprised huff of a laugh, as though it had been stolen from his lungs, and quickly clapped a palm over his own mouth to prevent any more laughs from escaping. “Is that what does it for you? You brute.” 

“Mmm.” Nosing experimentally at the soft place behind Caliban’s ear, Logan took several deep breaths and heard, with acute awareness, the sound of the other man’s pulse speeding up. He’d never been with a man before, but he figured the mechanics weren’t too terribly different than with women. Wasn’t it Charles who had said that in the womb all fetuses started identical, and dicks and vaginas happened later on in the process? 

Why was he thinking of this now? 

“I could eat you alive,” he growled close to Caliban’s ear, grateful that they were no longer discussing his own impending demise, and the full-body shudder that wracked the man’s body at his words was almost violent, as was the suddenly bursting scent of arousal in the air. 

Grinning, he dropped a hand to the front of Caliban’s towel and was unsurprised to find him hard. Caliban lightly pressed his erection into Logan’s palm, a question in his wide, blue eyes: _is this okay?_

It wasn’t- not really; they were isolated and desperate and lonely. They were employer and employee. There were lines not meant to be crossed; their worlds were worlds not meant to collide. Had circumstances been different, they’d have lived full lives having nothing to do with the other. 

Logan answered by grinding his palm flat over Caliban’s dick and heard a soft moan in response, the dizzying whirlpool eyes sliding mercifully closed. 

Without preamble, Logan wrenched the towel away, tossing it aside, and surveyed Caliban’s body. He was hairless and lightly muscled under his moonlit skin, his hips and shoulders narrow and his dick, of average length, engorged and pressed to his belly, white save for the pinkened tip. 

Logan dropped to his knees and, without giving himself time to think, engulfed Caliban’s length in his mouth, breathing out hard through his nose as he tried to remember what girls did while blowing him, sucking in his cheeks and pressing his tongue flat to the underside. 

_”Lord_ in heaven,” Caliban exclaimed, knees buckling, so Logan steadied his thin legs with his hands and continued sucking him off hard, moving his head back and forth. It was a messy job; he felt a string of drool run down his sore jaw and some of the noises his mouth was making were truly sloppy and disgusting. 

Slender fingers tangled in his hair, controlling his speed, and Logan let him take over the pace; it wasn’t as though he really knew what he was doing. Felt good, though; even the dick bumping the back of his throat felt good in a painful sort of way that made involuntary tears prick the corners of his eyes. He felt himself start to get hard. 

He stopped Caliban when he sensed the other man start to get close, standing and surprising the other man by lifting him bodily onto the outside worktable, laying him back and gripping the backs of his knees. 

“Logan?” Caliban questioned, and if Logan wasn’t very much mistaken there were spots of very faint pink showing high in his cheeks, offsetting his otherwise uniformly alabaster coloring. 

“Said I wanted to eat you,” Logan grinned, and buried his face between Caliban’s legs, running his tongue hot over the thin skin of his balls and then muzzling back and forth over his sensitive and twitching hole. 

“Logan!” Caliban squeaked- actually _squeaked_ \- and there was enough panic in his voice to still Logan, who peeked up sheepishly, meeting his eyes. 

“Too far?” he asked, hoping he hadn’t done something Caliban hated. He was just following his instincts, finding the place where Caliban burned the hottest, where the blood pumped most, where he was salty and hopeful and wanting. 

“I-!” There was _definately_ some pink in his face just then; he seemed to struggle for words. “I mean, nobody’s ever, and, _Jesus,_ Logan.” 

“So that’s a no?” 

Caliban considered him for a second, then lay back, covering his face with a hand. “I suppose it’s not a no.” 

With a wicked grin, Logan resumed his work, running his tongue firmly over Caliban’s hole, again and again, teasing his balls and then licking the underside of his dick, root to glans. If this was what sex with a guy was, he kind of liked it. He might have to try it a few more times for conclusive research: especially since Caliban was making such _sounds,_ whimpers and whines and half-formed words, his hands clenched so tightly on the edge of the table Logan wondered if he meant to break it. 

Logan pressed on the ring of muscle with the tip of his tongue, and once inside, he wriggled it slightly, tasting nothing more than soap and salt, and Caliban _whined,_ back bowing in an almost perfect arc off the table so that Logan quickly had to steady the whole thing to keep it from crashing over. 

“Wow,” Logan remarked, feeling inordinately pleased with himself, and moved in for the big finish, but was stopped by a palm on his forehead. 

“I don’t want to be the only one coming all over myself tonight, thank you,” Caliban said, breathless and debauched and yet so primly, properly, disapprovingly _British_ that Logan laughed out loud, shoulder-rocking snickers, as Caliban shot him a disdainful and wounded glare. 

“You are a horrible, filthy beast and a bad, unkind person, Logan,” Caliban chastised, too obviously embarrassed for his words to have any sting. “Stop _laughing,_ would you? Just fuck me already.” 

“Mm, is that what you want?” Logan managed to sober enough to ask. “Want me to fuck you til you cum on my dick?” 

“I want to put a muzzle on that incorrigible mouth of yours so you can never talk again!” 

Logan wondered if he’d given Caliban the maximum amount of color his body was capable of producing; his entire face, as well as his stiffly erect cock, were both flushed quite pink. It was all very amusing, but the painful tightness of his own pants made teasing the hell out of Caliban take a back burner. 

He stepped back to kick his jeans off and waited for Caliban to slide off the table, turning and bracing his forearms against the wood, his body a lovely arched invitation waiting for Logan to write his name over every inch of curved calf and boyish elbow. 

He pressed to the man’s back, let his hard cock slide between Caliban’s legs. Caliban jolted and looked down, then turned to stare at Logan with wide eyes. 

“That’s just not fair!” he exclaimed accusingly. “You’re _enormous!”_

“Oh, you like it.” The words stroked his ego nicely. Logan rocked forward, rutting him, forcing Caliban to rise to his toes and stick his hips out farther to accommodate him. “What’s the matter, too much for you?” 

“No!” Caliban insisted bravely. “Put it in me already!” 

“As you wish…” 

Despite his tone, Logan spat into his palm first and then stroked his cock, wetting it, before he lined the tip up with Caliban’s still-wet and loosened hole. It would be a tight fit; it might not even be possible. Not that it mattered; they were both having a good time, if the sheer amount of pre-cum shining pearly-clear on Caliban’s cock was any indication. 

Caliban took matters into his own hand and rocked back on his toes, forcing Logan in deeper. This time it was Logan’s turn to swear softly. 

_”Fuck.”_

“Yes, I do believe that’s the idea.” 

Oh, the smarmy bastard. Logan vowed to show him who made the snarky comments around here. With a hand on each cheek, Logan spread the man wider and watched in deep arousal as the length of his own cock slid slowly into Caliban’s ass until he was balls-deep and clenching his jaw at the hot, velvety tightness enveloping him. There was no way he’d last long; he simply had to make Caliban come first, and fast. He leaned forward, carefully taking an ear between his teeth and running a calloused palm from Caliban's naval to his sternum, cupping his neck as he thrusted shallowly into the arched body. 

Caliban’s head tilted back onto his shoulder, throat a bared offering to the moon above, and Logan timed his thrusts to the other man’s panting, gripping the slippery cock in his right hand and stroking hard. It was an arms race to who would finish first; nothing this good could last, and sure enough Caliban was crying out and coming so hard that multiple streaks of cum spattered his own chest when Logan finished inside him. 

Caliban’s knees finally gave out and he sank to the ground, Logan slipping out of him, as he pressed his face to his folded arms, panting. Logan sank with him, an arm around his chest holding him, half for comfort, half for balance. The light breeze cooled the sweat on their skin, making them both shiver. 

“I think,” Caliban panted, when finally he’d regained the ability to speak. “I think I’m going to need another bath.”


	3. The Second Year

. Caliban . 

Winter was an easier time of year for Caliban; the sun rose later and set earlier, leaving him more time to roam at his leisure. There were plenty of interesting things to find in the desert at night. From an abandoned trailer he was fairly certain had once been used to cook meth, for example, he'd salvaged a hot plate for the kitchen, a pile of rather musty towels that only needed a good washing, and a rather nice old television/VCR that he set up in Charles' room. It was cooler, too; cool enough to forgo fans and sometimes even turn on the space heaters, giving their plant a cozy feel. 

There were more animals, too; drawn out of dens and burrows and hibernation. Roadrunners and quail made their busy way back and forth from their cactus homes. Distant coyote howls chilled his blood every night. A small javelina family had taken residence nearby, and he wheeled Charles' chair as close to the window as he dared for them to watch the mother and two babies go about their lives, smiling at their waddling walks and tiny hoofprints. 

Mid-afternoons, however, when the faint sunlight covered the sparse, barren desert they called home, Caliban was still forced to stay away from windows and doors without his protective coverings. The others were usually good about remembering, but sometimes Logan would fall asleep with the window open and there had been a few close calls that left Caliban's skin sore and pinked. 

This afternoon, Caliban sat on the bed with Charles' freshly washed feet in his lap, gently trimming his toenails; in his chair, Charles was tackling his fingernails with a second set of clippers and talking cheerfully about holiday seasons at the school. 

"We always hang such lovely garlands," he said, smiling. "And Christmas crackers! Do Americans even use crackers?" 

"I think I've seen them in some novelty shops," Caliban replied. 

"Ah, yes. I'll ask Jean to order a few crates," said the professor fondly. "It's not _really_ Christmas without the scent of gunpowder, is it?" 

Caliban felt a small pang in his chest, but decided not to correct the old man; Charles was always happiest with his mind trapped in the past. 

"I agree, sir," he mumbled. 

"And the feast," Charles sighed dreamily. "The children _love_ the feast..." 

Caliban's tracking senses sent out a small, piney _ping_ that he'd come to associate with Logan. Finishing up, he gently set Charles' feet back on the floor, tucking them into his bedroom slippers, before picking up the towel that had picked up the clippings and folding it. He'd shake it out later, when he could again go outside. 

"Such... lovely garlands," Charles was murmuring softly to himself. "Such... lovely..." 

The pain came then, knocking Caliban off his feet as he clutched his head. He might have been screaming; the ringing in his ears was too much to bear. A second later he felt his chest constrict, as though he were deep under water. The pressure was enormous, trapping him in place. It'd been years since he'd last experienced one of Charles' episodes, but the feeling was unforgettable. 

He couldn't move, couldn't so much as draw a breath or close his eyes; frozen in place with a shaft of sunlight from the open window searing his arm. He was acutely aware of the burn, but couldn't stop it from happening; couldn't even scream to signal his agony. The smell of roasting meat filled the air- 

But it was accompanied with other scents, too; cloves, and nutmeg, and soft brown sugar. It was as though Caliban were seeing double: he could see the javelinas, frozen in place outside the window, but at the same time he was also seeing strands of garland strung up around an elaborate and grand hall, frosted and primed. Crayon-drawn snowflakes were taped on the rococo-style windows, and the long dining table was strewn with a feast. Goose on a bed of onions, and ham shiny with honey; soft yellow potatoes and long orange carrot spears. There were dishes of cranberries glittering like jewels and platters of small cakes. Each place setting- and there were dozens- were adorned with red-and-green napkins folded into the shape of swans, and in addition to silverware there were Christmas crackers; four to a plate. 

Children ran past giggling and whooping, new toys in their hands; a boy and a girl. They couldn't have been older than ten, and Charles- for he was Charles now- felt both love and sadness seeing the smiles on their faces. They wouldn't be going home for Christmas; their parents hadn't wanted them. No matter; this was their home now. 

"Merry Christmas, old man," Logan called, and the part of him that was still Caliban jerked in surprise. This Logan was young and clean-shaven and brimming with health. He was smiling; a wry little twist of his lips. He wore on his head a band of felt reindeer antlers that a student had no doubt just ornamented him with, small bells hanging from their prongs. He jingled slightly as he tilted his head. 

"Happy Christmas indeed!" responded Charles, laughing at the antlers, delighted at the company of one of his best professors and long-time friend. 

Then Logan's face changed; warped and rippled and aged; Caliban could see the dark circles that permanently ringed his eyes nowadays, the bushy days-old beard, small scars cropping up here and there on the ashen skin. 

"Charles!" he screamed, and suddenly Caliban was Caliban again, and his lungs heaved, vacuumed in great gasps of oxygen even as he felt his body collapse to the cement floor. He whimpered, curled around his baked limb, body shaking violently. He could hear scuffling behind him, hear Logan's voice, stiff in anger: 

"Have you not been taking your medicine?!" 

"I have, I have been," was Charles' tiny-voiced response. "I promise, Logan..." 

Footsteps approached and Caliban was seized around the waist, hauled to his feet and pressed to a sturdy chest. "Let me see," Logan commanded, taking Caliban's wrist gingerly. Caliban didn't want to look, but couldn't stop his eyes straying to the rectangular stripe of flesh, two inches across his left forearm; blackened and curled at the edges; deep red beyond that, with a streak of sickly-looking white in the center. The smell made his stomach lurch. 

Logan swore under his breath and pushed Caliban into one of the kitchen table's chairs before closing all the blackout curtains. Caliban hadn't realized he was crying, but now felt the wet streaks running down his cheeks. His brain kept looping on a single image: a little boy and girl, dressed in their best clothes, crumpled lifelessly on the wooden dining room floor of Xavier's mansion, eyes glassy and lips blue from suffocation. Logan's horrified voice in his ears: _"What have you_ done, _Charles?!"_

As though responding to the memory, Charles of the present day was rocking in his chair, weeping into his hands. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry." Blood was trickling down one of his hands, and Caliban realized he must have wrenched a fingernail from its bed with the clippers once the seizure began. He stood to tend to it, but was pushed back into his chair by Logan as he re-entered their room. "You stay," snapped the mutant. "That's a second-degree burn you've got there." 

He was carrying paper grocery bags which looked rather dusty and crumpled; he must have dropped them outside in his haste to get to Charles once the episode began. Tucked under one arm was a bucket that sloshed slightly when he set it at Caliban's feat: water from their filtration system, with a plastic cup floating inside. 

"Pour water over it," Logan ordered. "Keep it up for a few minutes, okay? It's gonna hurt like a bitch, but don't stop." 

Wincing, Caliban leaned forward to do as directed, holding his arm lengthwise over the bucket and using his free hand to scoop water into the cup, which he poured over the burn that throbbed in time with his heartbeat. He bit hard on his lip to keep from making a sound, though his nerves screamed in protest, and closed his eyes in disgust when the blackened skin sloughed off to float in paper-thin curls atop the bucket water's surface. 

Logan was tending to Charles, though he kept up a stream of steady swearing under his breath between interrogating questions and finger bandaging: was he _absolutely sure_ he'd been taking his medication? 

Caliban knew why Logan wanted the answer to be _no;_ if Charles _hadn't_ been taking the seizure medication they went to so much trouble to smuggle, steal, and purchase under the table, then that meant something worse: the medication had failed, and might fail again. Then it would be back to the drawing board of trial and error. 

Finally acknowledging the truth with a string of profanities, Logan stomped over to grab a second chair, swiveling it around to face Caliban, and dropped their first-aid kit on the table. Caliban almost didn't recognize it from the holes gouged into the metal lid, his confused brain piecing together that, in his desperation to reach the syringes, Logan must have used his claws instead of taking the time to fumble the clasps. Sure enough, crusted blood was covering his knuckles, as well as pale pinkened slits showing where the skin had been broken and was gradually attempting to grow back. 

First from the damaged kit Logan withdrew a packet of acetaminophen and tore it with his teeth, then handed it to Caliban along with a half-empty bottle of lukewarm water. Obligingly, Caliban swallowed the pills and gave Logan his hand, allowing him to carefully dab on smears of aloe. Logan looked troubled, and Caliban knew what he was thinking: if this burn became infected, they'd have to go to a hospital. Looking the way he did, they were sure to be remembered when they had to make their escape without paying the bill. Caliban resolved to take excellent care of the injury to prevent that possibility. 

Logan seemed lost in thought, still dabbing aloe over the burn, though it was quite covered. 

"That's enough," Caliban told him finally, laying his good hand on the other mutant's wrist. "We'll let it breathe for a while and I'll bandage it tonight. We've done all we can." 

Logan started at the sound of his voice, then looked down at the arm he held. "Right." 

Carefully, he set it back down on the table, then got up and went to put the groceries away. Charles had managed to heave himself from chair to bed and was curled in a ball facing away from them, crying so softly that even Caliban could hardly hear him. Caliban finished drinking the water Logan had given him, then stood; the previous brain-scrambling experience left him a little dizzy on his feet, but he made his way carefully to the old man and laid a hand on his shoulder. 

"It'll be alright," he told Charles, hating to see him so miserable. But the image of the dead children persisted. _Would_ anything ever be alright to Charles again, after that? "It's not your fault. Any of it." 

Charles wept on, unconsoled, so Caliban got onto the bed beside him and rested his head on the old man's shoulder, simply feeling the pain with him. He didn't know what else to do. 

Eventually Logan roused them for dinner; canned soup he'd heated over the hot plate and bread he'd toasted and buttered. Charles barely picked at his portion before returning to bed and turning off his light, signaling he didn't want to be disturbed any more that night. Logan ate quickly before sliding his jacket back on. 

"I've got work," he murmured, and made for the curtains, but Caliban stopped him by catching his sleeve. 

"Don't be so down," Caliban said, trying to inject some cheer into his voice. "It's not all bad. We'll manage this." 

Then, because Logan still looked unconvinced, he stood and kissed his frown, fitting his lips over the expression as though trying it on himself. It was a bit awkward; they were rarely physically intimate (it'd been two very sore mornings, spaced about a month apart, before Caliban had added _lubricant, unscented,_ on their grocery list, inconspicuously tucked between _bread, wheat,_ and _garbage bags, 20 gallon._ That had been seasons ago, and the little clear bottle still remained half-full) and kissing was an even more seldom occurrence. 

Still, he wasn't about to pretend that he, at least, didn't have feelings. 

Logan responded after a heartbeat, returning his kiss cautiously (his beard scratched, but not unpleasantly so) before releasing Caliban. 

"I know," he said, sounding calmer and more grounded, which had been the intent all along. "Good night." 

. Logan . 

Logan had only taken a few steps in the vague direction where his limo was parked when he stumbled over something. Quickly regaining his balance, he glanced down and saw the still body of the adult javelina. His stomach knotted. 

Picking her up gingerly in both hands, he searched around for her babies. They weren't far. Those, he could carry in one hand. He'd take them farther into the desert. Leaving them at the doorstep would only attract hawks and coyotes at best, and at worse, would make Charles cry all the more. 

He tried not to think of other times Charles' episodes had cost innocent lives, but it was no use. The image of the dead children plagued him still; worse because he'd been witness to the original events. Children. Students. _His_ students; their lives just snuffed out like a candles' flame in mere minutes. There'd been bodies all over the mansion, and he'd been the only one able to account for them all, lifting still-warm youngsters and teens, and even his colleagues, from where they'd collapsed. Some of them were still _smiling,_ excited by the holiday festivities, never knowing what was about to happen. It was as bad as a warzone; _worse._ One second they were there, and then... not. With only Charles and Logan left to mourn. 

He didn't think that he, Charles, and Caliban were the _only_ mutants left in the world. Surely in the far pockets of the continents, a few stragglers remained; too faint to be picked up even by Caliban's radar. But everyone _he'd_ known and cared for were dust in the wind. 

He left the javelina in a small incline several miles from the house. Their thick, wild odor clung to his skin. Finally reaching his vehicle, parked on the shoulder of the road, he left the windows down to clear away the worst of it and made his long way into town. The post office was minutes from closing, so he hurried to check Cal's P.O. Box, finding a few packages with hand-written addresses. He'd ordered VHS tapes for Charles to watch; old films long enough to warrant intermissions with titles like _Gone With the Wind_ and _My Fair Lady._ He stowed them in his pocket, then began his nightly work of scheduled pickups. 

Tonight the theme seemed to be shady business people being transferred from airport to hotel; quiet men and women in stylish yet nondescript clothes, who talked in murmurs of numbers and profit shares. They paid cash- Logan's favorite kind of customer- and threw in extra to be kept off the official paperwork, which Logan was only too happy to oblige. 

There was a ninety minute gap between first pickup and second, and he turned the radio up as he cruised aimlessly around, burning gas when he should have just parked, but the thought of holding still, alone with his thoughts, was not a good idea with his current mood. _If sharks stop swimming, they drown._ The thought came out of nowhere, and he smiled. Maybe it was only certain sharks, or was it all sharks? Charles would know. He was always stealing Logan's work phone to watch BBC nature documentaries, burning through his monthly data because they didn't dare risk a WiFi connection. Curse Caliban for teaching him how to access YouTube. 

The second set of shady businesspeople were at least slightly friendlier than the first group, rolling down the divider window and taking his attention off of matters by keeping up polite conversation. _Did he watch sports?_ No, he'd been falling behind recently. _Oh, well he should catch back up, because-!_

Already, he mentally tallied their funds as he returned home for the second time that night. He was consistent in the percentage he offered Caliban, though he knew the other man would have said nothing had his earnings gone down. In the end, he and Charles would leave, and Caliban would stay; alone, once more. He would be the last person Logan would ever hurt, in a long lifetime of doing nothing _but_ hurt people. It was the least he could do to assuage his own guilty conscious. 

He stopped to buy a clanking paper bag of bottles at a liquor store. It was too much. But it seemed more and more that _too much_ just wasn't enough. 

The desert was dark and still when Logan finally made his way home; the only light a butter-colored spear protruding from a gap in the curtains as gravel crunched under his feet. Letting himself in, he heard Charles breathing softly from his room. Good; he'd finally fallen asleep. 

At the kitchen table, Caliban was also sleeping, his cheek pillowed on his good arm, drooling slightly on an open paperback, which Logan picked up. _Dante's Inferno._ How fitting. 

True to his word, Caliban had carefully bandaged his arm, the stark white of the fabric a dead match for his skin tone. The slumped-over position was sure to wreak havoc on his long spine. 

Logan pulled Caliban upright and slid an arm under his thighs, lifting him from the table and carrying him towards the bed. He was awkward to hold; not because he was heavy, but because he was so tall. His bare feet bumped Logan's calves with every step. 

"Hey," Caliban mumbled, eyes still closed as Logan laid him on the bed. "S'your turn to sleep in the bed. I'm s'posed to be awake at night." 

Logan double, triple, quadruple-checked the blackout curtains, ensuring that the sun would not be able to hurt him again as it rose. "I wouldn't be able to sleep tonight anyway," he said honestly. 

Caliban didn't reply. He was once more sound asleep. 

Logan took his seat at the table and opened the paperback once more, pulling his glasses from his pocket to perch on his nose. The still-unhealed slits on his knuckles, from where his claws had protruded, were starting to throb unfamiliarly under their scabs of dried blood. 

He wondered when he'd started to see every moment that passed as a goodbye.


	4. Interlude: Loyalty

. Logan . 

He hadn't wanted to be doing this again so soon. 

In the prescription-medication dealing world, Logan had found, there were limited options. The easiest had been to find a crooked medical professional willing to risk trouble for extra cash. His best, and longest lasting, of these suppliers had been a CNA working at a nearby nursing home, until the idiot had gotten himself caught and sentenced to three years, minimum, building roads in an orange jumpsuit. 

Barring this option, there was out-and-out theft, easier said than done. Short of actually hurting people, Logan was unskilled in covert criminal acts; the kind that wouldn't leave memories, footage, or claw marks. 

There was the off-chance he'd get lucky and find a rich teenager willing to sell off a few handfuls of whatever from their pill-popping mothers' bathroom cabinets, but he doubted very much he'd find any offering what he sought. 

He was running into nothing but dead ends trying to stop Charles' seizures once they'd begun again. Sometimes they were only tremors; a space between heartbeats where the world was stopped. Sometimes they were bigger, lasting until Logan could, inch by suffocating inch, draw close enough to inject Charles with small doses of tranquilizers. This had to end soon; the more they happened, the more likely it was they'd be found. 

For Caliban's safety he moved the old man into his own room; a domed enclosure of the plant he spent days cleaning out until it was habitable and could support a hospital bed; it lessened the effect of immediate contact, but it didn't do much good in the long run. He tried not to question the spray of buckshot that peppered the ceiling with tiny holes. 

Logan dreaded the day he'd be too late, when it'd be Caliban's body he'd be burying in the desert. It was the stuff of nightmares that pushed him in his search for a cure, however temporary. 

"He thinks the world would be better off if I were dead," Charles had accused one night over hamburgers and French fries, pointing a shaking finger at Caliban. "I saw it in his head; he thinks you should just kill me!" 

Caliban looked horrified. "No, I didn't, Charles! I would never think-" 

But there'd been a flash of guilt in those whirlpool eyes, and a whiff of nerves coming off the telling skin of his throat. However fleeting and unintentional the thought had been, it'd still been there. 

"Charles, stay out of peoples' heads," Logan sighed tiredly. "If we wanted you dead, we wouldn't be going to all this trouble keeping you alive." 

Later, as he carried Charles from the main area of the plant they'd all once shared, back to the domed portion that now served as his room (the desert scrub was too difficult to push the wheelchair through; once he'd have a chance to raid a construction zone and steal some pallets, he'd be able to build a path,) Charles was much quieter than normal, remaining silent instead of his usual endless chatter as Logan maneuvered them over hot dirt that rose in plumes to coat Logan's shoes with every footfall. 

"You feeling okay, old man?" He asked, turning down the sheets and then setting him in his bed. The last thing he needed was Charles getting _physically_ sick on top of everything else. Logan's healing abilities made run-of-the-mill bugs and germs bounce right off of him, but Caliban and Charles had been isolated for so long that, no doubt, their immune systems were weak at best. If Logan had brought some virus back in his clothes or hair... 

"I'm fine." 

The tone of his voice was anything _but_ fine, and Logan sighed again as he sat on the foot of the bed, hearing it creak under his significant weight as he waited the old man out. 

"The world _would_ be better off without me in it." The words were spoken quietly, quickly, as though forcing himself to spit them out. 

Logan waited for more, but when none came, he spoke bluntly. "Maybe. Probably. It'd be better without me in it, too, but I'm not going anywhere yet." 

Charles glanced at him in some surprise, dark eyes devoid of the spark that had once brought a grin to many a small child's face. 

Logan shrugged off the questioning look. He was sitting with his feet flat on the floor and his elbows propped on his knees, bent at the waist as he absently studied the cracks in the floor. "Hell," he added thoughtfully. _"Most_ people would agree that we should have died out years ago. Caliban, too. They used to call him a circus freak. He made children scream just by looking at them, and _he's_ never even killed anyone." 

When he felt the curious nudge of Charles' presence in his mind, he held still and let him look without protest. Charles gently traced along neurons and synapses, paging through memories like he was examining a very fragile photobook. It made Logan's nose twitch in a reflexive, sneeze-like motion. Tickly. 

Charles was absorbing his emotions like someone inhaling the individual aromas of different flowers in a vase, trying to find the sweetest. It didn't take long. _"Oh,"_ he said, in a soft, humbled voice. 

Logan's love for the old man was pulled to the forefront of his brain as though drawn by a fishing lure. It was an immovable sort of love, iron strong and doggedly stubborn; a love that spoke of family and was cemented in decades of shared hardship that had formed a support core for his very identity: undeniable and concrete. "Logan, you're crying." 

Logan allowed the withered old hand to brush the wet streak from his cheek for only a moment before standing. "That's what happens when people fish around in your head," he explained, clearing his throat forcefully. "And as far as I'm concerned, the rest of the world can all hang. I'm staying with you, got it?" 

He said the last bit rather more assertively than he'd intended, and then found it hard to look Charles. He was gazing at Logan, close to tears himself, once more the sharp, alert man he'd been forty years ago. As Logan turned out the light and let himself out of the room Charles said quietly, "I'm honored to have you as my son." 

Caliban had his back to the door when Logan let himself in, standing at their basin and slowly scrubbing the smell of onion and beef from the frying pan in the sudsy water. There was something strikingly vulnerable about him from that angle that made him seem almost alien, a stranger. The curve of his jaw, the shadow of his lashes on his cheeks, made spider-long by the warm amber glow of their only lamp. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and Logan could see his healed-over burn scar; pink and indented, like a clean slice had been taken out of his flesh. 

He stiffened when Logan put a hand on the basin on either side of him and pressed his forehead to the ridgy plane between his flat shoulderblades, breathing in his familiar scent to chase the strange feeling away. 

"Is Charles alright?" he asked, the vibration of his voice buzzing Logan's forehead. Then, before he could be answered, "I would never do it, you know. Hurt either of you. It was just one of those intrusive thoughts; those happen when you're tired." 

It was clearly bothering him; he sounded defensive, and his shoulders didn't relax. Logan slid his arms from the basin to wrap around Caliban's waist instead. "Yeah," he said, like he understood. He did, truly. He too was tired; bone tired. 

When Caliban still didn't soften, Logan reached for the pan and took it from his hands, setting it down before gripping him by the damp wrists and gently turning him around. His face and mouth were a puzzle of lines and arches, locking away what he was feeling. Logan smoothed his calloused palm over the soft jaw and tugged him down. Understanding at last, Caliban closed his eyes and bent obligingly to meet him halfway. 

Caliban liked kissing, Logan knew. He'd been deliberately filling their portion of the smelting plant _with_ Caliban things. Thrift-store classic works: Poe, Keating, Austin, Shakespeare. Their storage boxes now contained a selection of mugs, lemon candies, and teas, and on a set of hooks Logan hung by the main curtain were several wide-brimmed hats and pairs of dark goggles. It became painfully obvious looking at it now what Logan had silently been trying to scream: _Stay. Please. I can't do this alone._

Caliban's eyes, when he broke away from Logan's kiss, were almost unbearably understanding. He knew; he'd known for a long time. And when he reached for Logan's hand, Logan let him have it. He would have denied him nothing in that moment. 

Caliban held Logan's hand up, examining the still-scabbed over marks his claws had left behind. Every time he drew them, it took longer and longer to heal properly. He sometimes had to clean crusted pus from his knuckles in the mornings; that was new. More and more of his scars weren't healing all the way. Whatever was happening inside him, whatever had finally gone off like sour milk, was taking him downhill at an ever-increasingly rapid pace. 

Caliban released his hand and looked into his eyes, indecision evident as he considered his next words, then hardening as he made up his mind to speak. 

"I know about the _Sunseeker,_ Logan." 

. Caliban . 

Caliban woke to warm breath bathing his collarbone, and cracked his eyes, quickly adjusting to the dim light straining in from a crack on the far wall. He was flat on his back in bed, with Logan sprawled partially on top of him in a deep slumber. 

It was such an unusual sight that it gave Caliban pause: he couldn't remember the last time the mutant had _really_ slept, more than a few fitful hours of tossing and turning. It was good to see, but he was quickly growing aware of how numb his left arm was, pinned down awkwardly under the brunt of Logan's weight. 

Praying not to disturb him, Caliban gingerly eased himself out from underneath him, his bare feet thudding softly on the floor. Then, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from hissing, he shook out his hands. A rain of tingles shot up his arm, buzzing and increasing until, with a painful throb, feeling returned to the limb. It continued to feel sore and a little useless as he knelt and picked an armful of clean clothes from a basket and then dressed- underwear, trousers, socks, a thin button-up shirt that he unrolled the sleeves all the way to cover his still-tender burn. When he straightened, he saw that Logan had rolled to cover the rest of the bed, thick calves hanging from the mattress. His mouth was wide open and he was drooling slightly: he was _out._

After fussing in the kitchen he donned his hat, goggles, and poncho before stepping out into the sunlight to bring Charles a cup of tea. The old man was also resting deeply despite the lateness of the morning hour, leaving Caliban feeling rather at a loss. Unwilling to disturb the peace, but unsure what do with himself in such a situation. Finally, he returned inside with his own tea and propped open a battered and dog-eared copy of _As You Like It._ Despite his namesake, he preferred the Bard's comedies to his tragedies and romances. 

Something was dragging him away from the comfortingly familiar arguments of sheperdess and Duke and brother fighting brother, and he furrowed his brow in annoyance as he tried to keep the focus on his play, but there it was again: _chirp, chirp, chirp,_ the three trilling notes of Logan's work phone; soft but impossible to ignore. _Chirp, chirp, chirp._ And again: _chirp, ch-_

He opened his mouth to complain for Logan to turn the alarm off and go to work already, when he remembered the peacefully sleeping face and stood quickly to do it himself, kneeling in the floor and patting around their tangled and discarded clothes from the day before until he found the sleek black rectangle inside one of Logan's back pockets. Tapping the screen revealed a full schedule: he had clients back to back for most of the day, more or less entirely on the American side of the border. 

He glanced back onto the bed, where Logan's face, tipped to the side, faced his. The parenthesis underneath his eyes were dark as bruises, but the pink scarring on his knuckles had faded to a dull rose, closing and healing, not a whiff of pus to be smelled. This was a healing sleep; Caliban would have sooner danced naked in the noonday sun than interrupt it. 

That, of course, left one logical solution. 

From Logan's jeans, he withdrew the keys to his limousine, and then dug in packing boxes until he found his wallet containing his fake ID and his cash savings. These, he slipped into the pockets of his own trousers, adding his forged medical screening paperwork. 

Then, letting himself out, he began the long walk to where he knew the vehicle was parked. 


	5. Interlude Part II: Fallout

. Caliban . 

Not especially wanting to dwell in the already-too-hot desert, Caliban's long legs made quick work over the scrubbrush. His tracking senses had told him, day after day, where Logan parked the limousine and began his walk, and he didn't see any reason why today would be any different; he trustingly followed his mental map all the way to where the sleek black vehicle was parked at the shoulder of the road, Logan's phone and keys in his pocket bumping his leg with every step. 

This was probably a bad idea. Anxiety squirmed like slugs in his gut. 

He noticed a ding in the passengers side door and touched it curiously, running his fingers over the dent, and was surprised to feel multiple such bumps in the otherwise smooth black metal. His fingers touched the edge of something unseen and, slipping his nails under it, he peeled back a thick, plastic... _sticker?_

He saw, then, the bulletholes Logan had so clearly been trying to cover up, and the slugs in his stomach twisted violently, slimy and viscous. He'd been _shot_ at. When? Was this a common occurrence? He'd clearly not felt the need to tell _Caliban_ about it! What sort of limo driver was _shot?_

This idea was looking worse by the minute, but he thought of the rough feel of Logan's scars underneath his hands last night. New scars, though they felt and looked old. The delayed healing response, then. He thought he had a good idea of where those had come from, now. 

Gulping, he pressed the concealing black sticker back flat over the bullet holes, then unlocked the car and slid onto the drivers' seat, which he had to move backwards a little to accommodate for his greater height. He fidgeted with the angle of the rearview mirror, and gripped the gear shift stick. It'd been just shy of a _decade_ since he'd last drove, and he was only licensed to do so in the UK. 

He put a foot on the gas pedal, took a long, calming breath through his nose and out through his mouth, and turned the key in the ignition. For Logan, then. 

_. Logan ._

Logan woke gradually to the now-familiar, soft whirring of wheels on cement, the sweet smell of sliced apples more immediate than the soapy scent of Caliban or the ever-present desert dust. 

He rolled onto his side, a hand rubbing the sleep from his eyes before opening them. 

He saw Charles immediately, in their makeshift kitchen, just putting the kettle back on the hot plate. 

"Good morning, Logan," he greeted, without turning around. "Or afternoon, I should say." 

Logan became sheepishly aware that he was naked, and made sure that the blanket covered him adequately before speaking. 

"Hey, old man." He felt, if not _good,_ then _okay._ It'd been such a long time since he'd last felt okay that he was slower on the uptake than generally was his style. 

"I've made you a snack," Charles said, and Logan followed his gaze to the shelf-turned-nightstand where a plate of sliced apples and celery, the latter spread with peanut butter and dotted with raisins, awaited him. It was a childish snack, something he remembered in the dining hall from working at school. 

"Ants on a log?" 

Charles, turning his chair to face Logan, offered him a small smile. "I was feeling nostalgic." 

Logan dragged the plate closer and ate. It was good; fresh apples, crunchy celery. Only as he chewed did a niggling thought come forefront to his mind. 

"Where did this come from? I haven't bought anything fresh in a while." 

Charles got two mugs from the cupboard; into one, he dropped a tea bag. Into the other he spooned several teaspoons of instant coffee. "Caliban bought them between pickups," he explained. 

The kettle whistled and he poured hot water into both mugs, switching the hot plate off as he stirred the coffee and handed it to Logan, then took his own tea. 

Logan stared numbly at the still whirling coffee as it dissolved, steam washing over his face. Then- 

"Wait, between what? _Pickups?"_

"Well I don't know the proper limousine-driver jargon," Charles huffed. "It's not as if you talk enough to enlighten us." He wheeled back to the cupboards, his back again to Logan, and there was a small bright burst of citrus scent in the air as, presumably, he began slicing a lemon for his tea. 

"Caliban... is... driving a limousine. And picking up... people. And he bought _groceries?"_

"Goodness, Logan," Charles chortled as, tea fixed to his satisfaction, he began wheeling himself to the back door, to the path that lead to his new bedroom. "Do try to keep up. And- oh, I did _not_ want to see that-" 

He was responding to Logan jumping abruptly out of bed, scrambling around blindly underneath it for his pants. Logan ignored him, stuffing his legs into his jeans before belatedly realizing he'd done so backwards. There was nearly a minor tragedy with small Logan as he fixed his mistake and wrenched the zipper up, too distracted by finding his shoes to notice. 

He shoved his brown work loafers on his feet without bothering with socks or laces, and ran bare-chested out the front door into blinding afternoon sunlight. His pockets were empty, the weight of his wallet, keys, and phone conspicuously absent against his leg. Taking off at a run, he covered the miles from plant to road in minutes. 

Nothing remained of his limousines but tire tracks in the dirt and a very faint tang of rubber in the air. Closing his eyes and inhaling deeply brought traces of Caliban's soap to his mind, but he might have been imagining it. 

The sun beat hot on his bare shoulders, the lines Caliban had scratched there the night before only faint and pink now. What was that crazy mutant _thinking,_ going out in the day like this? 

His walk back to the plant was slower than his near-sprint to the road. He felt quite numb, with the beginnings of anxiety gnawing at the pit of his stomach; a dawning realization that, without the limousine, he was a trapped animal. 

When he reached the plant and pushed open the chicken-wire fence that surrounded the property, hosting half a dozen signs that read warnings like _unsafe_ and _condemned_ and _keep out,_ in English and Spanish, with little cartoon figures being electrocuted and crushed under fallen rubble to really drive the point home, he sat heavily on the remains of a flat-tire graveyard and buried his face in his hands, feeling slightly nauseous. 

In his domed room, Logan heard Charles puttering around in his chair, caring for his potted plant collection while a woman's voice on his television sang merrily of hills being alive (with the sounds of music). He wondered how far he could carry the old man- surely not all the way to the city! It might once have been possible, but neither of them was at the strength they once had. Perhaps if he could just make it to the road with him, they could hitchhike... 

But what good would that do? Charles was missing- and wanted- by some nasty people. If they got wind of his location, surely they'd send enough reinforcements to keep even _Logan_ down while they... they... 

He made an inhuman sound into his trembling hands, curling into an even tighter ball, trying to block out the memory of the old man's whimpers and sobs. _Help me, Logan. They're coming for me._

That Caliban left for good, he had no doubt. Why wouldn't he? Logan had suspected he would, all along. But to leave them high and dry, without a car to escape in! How cowardly of him to just _leave_ like that... 

He took deep breaths, trying to keep from panicking. If he went into his feral survival mode, he'd lose all chance of rational planning. Something was pressing for his attention, and he tried to let the panic subside long enough for it to shine through his distracted mind. 

The apples, the lemons. The tea and coffee. Caliban had been grocery shopping between shifts- Logan's shifts. If Charles was telling the truth- and he had to be; Logan certainly hadn't purchased any of those things- then Caliban really was trying to work Logan's job for him. 

This brought about a moment of shocking relief before Logan was plunged into a whole new series of troubling images. Hardly a day went by on the job where Logan _wasn't_ hassled by someone; dealers looking to cross the border one way or the other. Car jackers. The occasional smartass who took a strong dislike to Logan's size and quiet, and felt the need to prove their manhood. Being an independent limousine driver who worked both sides of the border brought out the worst in people, sometimes. 

He tried not to think of ignorant white supremacists mistaking Caliban's covering for religious garb and grabbing ahold of his hat or scarf, exposing his inhumanly pale skin to sunlight. It wouldn't take a genius to figure out he was a mutant. 

This was all his own stupid, _stupid_ fault, for resting. For sleeping in. For allowing himself to relax, as though forgetting even for a second that they weren't outlaws, criminals, hunted and living on a knife's edge. For allowing himself to feel _safe._

He was plagued by thoughts of Caliban shot, Caliban burnt, Caliban kidnapped and sold or raped or murdered or all of the above. Caliban dragged screaming from the drivers' seat and thrown on the side of the road, kicked and beaten by men with confederate flags tattooed on the backs of their shaven heads. It wasn't even an implausible reach; he had customers like that every day. 

He knew he was paranoid, but expecting the worst had gotten him through, if Charles was to believed, hundreds of years of life on a planet that hated his kind. 

There was a trailer park not thirty miles south of the plant. If he left now, he could steal a truck before nightfall. Then he could scour the roads and hope he found the albino mutant. If not... 

... if not. 

If not, well. Charles was his priority first and foremost, though his gut twisted with the sour urge to vomit just thinking about abandoning his... his _whatever_ Caliban was to him. He cursed himself for ever asking for Caliban's help; there wasn't a single person in the history of the world who wasn't worse off having been involved with him. He was a goddamn curse. 

He checked to see that Charles was doing alright, watching his musical- Charles particularly liked this one; something about gifted children having to flee from persecutors having struck a chord in him- and grabbed a shirt before heading out in the purposeful direction of the trailer park, hoping only that nobody with a gun tried to stop him. He felt too stable to ensure their survival. 

He'd been walking for near three-quarters of an hour, with the sun darkening from white light to butter-yellow when a scent on the changing breeze made him listen. Soap. Tea. Lemon candies. 

Whirling on the spot, he shielded his eyes with his hand and squinted. A figure in the distance waved frantically. 

He felt dizzy with relief, and then felt nothing at all. 

He was met halfway by a panting and sweating Caliban, who gripped him hard by the shoulders. "Logan," he gasped between pants. "I... Saw you. Up ahead. You looked..." 

However Logan had looked to the mutant's near-psychic eye, he never did address. Logan's brain helpfully supplied adjectives. _Murderous. Crazy. At the end of his rope._

Logan was very stiff as Caliban, having clearly run quite some distance, wrapped him in his thin arms. 

"Did I upset you?" he asked anxiously, ducking his head to meet Logan's eyes. "Charles said your brain was... Not well." 

_Had he_ upset _him?_ Logan didn't trust himself to speak, and Caliban seemed to catch onto this, because instead of pressing further, he only took Logan's hand and tugged. "Let's go home?" 

Silently, Logan allowed himself to be pulled along. It felt as though claws were scraping at his insides; the urge to let go, surrender to the animal that existed at the core of him, the thing that they called the Wolverine, was strong as ever. His eyes scanned Caliban's tall form ahead of him- no limp, no visible injury. He inhaled deeply, but no scent of blood met him. Caliban was safe. What was _his_ was alright. 

He tried to shake the unwanted thought. Caliban wasn't his. Nobody was his. He'd deliberately been avoiding such sentimentality in his life, ever since he'd witnessed the mass death of kids and colleagues and strangers near a decade ago. But to the Wolverine, it didn't matter. Caliban was family. Pack. _His._

It didn't bode well for his impending plans: Sunseeker. Charles. Bullet. He'd just have to get over it. 

Having been dragged from one haze of murderous rage to another of shocked docility, Logan found himself suddenly hyperfocused on the landscape around them; how the impending sunset spread red across the pale desert sand, granules of rock glittering like diamonds as dull-colored creatures- lizards and horned toads- skittered into hiding at their approach. 

Charles was waiting for them inside the plant, eyes focused, and followed Logan as he shook off Caliban's hand and hovered in the doorway, uncomfortable with the thought of going inside. Walls felt too much like a trap just then. 

"Thank goodness," Charles said, presumably to Caliban. "His mind is frightening when it gets like that. I'm glad you found him before there was trouble." 

This shook Logan from his fog, a little. _"My_ mind is frightening?" he asked the professor incredulously. Charles smiled. 

_"There_ you are, Logan." 

Caliban breezed into the plant. Logan could smell his nervousness; it rested on the surface of his skin like a film, but he tried to mask it with happy chatter. 

"Oh, what a day. I earned quite a lot of money, Logan, let me just put your wallet on the bed, there you are, love. I have all the receipts in place- even the grocery one. I took the liberty of extracting my cut for the day, don't mind that. For dinner I was thinking-" 

When he passed within grabbing distance, Logan reached in and gripped his arm, startling him. He gulped and blinked at Logan worriedly, waiting. 

"After dark," Logan said, and his voice sounded gruff even to his own ears. "After dark, come outside. I'm going to teach you how to shoot a gun."


	6. The Last Days

_Bad shit happens to people I care about._  
\- Logan, 2017

. Caliban . 

_A girl._

Girl, distinctly. Not a woman. He couldn't explain the difference in so many words, but he Knew. 

Though, there was nothing especially childlike about this girl. If he weren't so sure it was impossible, he would say it was an animal that had been flashing like a warning light at the fringes of his awareness for a while now. Piney; strange yet unnervingly familiar. He frowned and rubbed at his forehead, and the image was gone again. It'd been plaguing him for days. 

"Headache?" Logan asked, already stepping towards their near-crushed first aid kit. 

"Mmm." Caliban nodded, clumsily fumbling the packet of pills Logan tossed his way. "Yeah. I keep getting the strangest vision. There's this mutant but she's... not _right."_

What, exactly, was wrong with her, sending her flashing in and out of his consciousness like a poor phone connection? Logan and Charles remained fixed points in his brain; he was always aware of their presence, whether or not he focused on it. 

"A mutant?" Logan frowned. "Do you know where she is?" 

He didn't have to state the impossibility of it all. There _were_ no more mutants; they, the three of them, were the last. If, against all odds, some lucky survivor from the far ends of the planet were to stumble across them, it wouldn't be a _child._ They'd all stopped being born long ago. They'd all privately come to accept that their deaths would be the end of an era, that once they'd taken their final breaths, only humans would be left to inhabit the earth. 

Maybe it was better that way. 

Not far," Caliban thought. "Somewhere in the western states." 

It was irritatingly vague, and Caliban knew it. He suspected she was in a state of travel, but he wasn't sure enough to grasp much. There was nothing: not height, not weight, not race or age or location or powers or _anything._ Just _child; girl._

Logan considered this thoughtfully for about half a second before shrugging. "Maybe your wires are picking up wrong signals," he said dismissively, tapping on his own head with his scarred knuckles to demonstrate. "You're not getting any younger either, you know." 

Then he strode past Caliban and went outside, while the taller mutant tried not to let out a tut of annoyance. Logan had been distant with him in recent months, and he tried not to so much as think at how much it stung. 

It wasn't the lack of sex that bothered him; neither one of them were feeling their best. But the lack of intimacy altogether- though he'd never been cuddly, Logan showed his affection physically. Nudges with his elbow, bumps against his sides, sitting closer than he needed to at dinner- was beginning to get depressing. All of that had started deteriorate, and now the only time they ever seemed to touch were the nights Logan had the time and energy to teach him basic self defense. This, at least, he was adamant about. 

Caliban hated himself for being so pathetic as to yearn for arms around his, showing him how to cock and fire a pistol. He even liked when Logan performed as the aggressive party in training, pinning him and landing soft blows that he was supposed to be learning how to block. He was learning, but physical fighting had never been his strong suit. When it came to fight or flight, he chose flight. 

He'd been called a coward so many times in his youth that he supposed it must be true. 

He was decidedly cowardly when it came to addressing Logan's moods and ever-failing health. Once Logan started yelling and throwing dishware, Caliban clammed up, though he knew he was right. 

He felt it in his bones. Things were coming to an end, and he feared the inevitable crash and burn so much that it filled his nightmares, shallowing his sleep and leaving him in a tired daze in waking hours. 

They were all sleep-deprived these days. 

A flicker: there she was again. _Child. Girl. Moving._ He suspected she was in a car. There was a bitter taste in the back of his mouth, something like fear. Was she afraid? Perhaps; not in the conventional way a child feared. Her fear spurred her, a fear she'd lived with so long that it grew with her, filled her core, marked her decisions and movements. 

She was gone as quickly as she'd come. 

Caliban buried his face in his arms, massaging his aching temples and wishing he understood. 

... 

He knew her the second he saw her, a dour-faced half-pint with brown eyes hyper-focused in an animalistic intelligence, sizing him up without curiosity. He saw it in the set of her jaw, so similar to Logan's: she was calculating how best to dispose of him, and he had no doubt that she _could._

He held his palms up, slowly, a universal gesture of _I mean no harm,_ and she considered for a moment before striding past him, all interest abated, and went straight into the smelting plant. 

He stood quite still for a time after she'd passed, finally, _finally_ understanding her bizarre familiarity. At point blank range, she was... Logan. He couldn't explain it, but he Knew it. This girl and Logan were one and the same, in more ways than one. 

Holding her red toy ball in his left hand and adjusting his hat with the right, he was feeling significantly windswept. This all felt like the tail-end of the calm before the storm, and he felt a bit on-edge. Charles greeted her as _Laura,_ with the air of one welcoming a long-expected visitor. The child did not respond. 

He should have known she'd be followed. 

His heart froze in his chest, a solid block of iced muscle, as a metallic arm snaked around his waist and a pistol introduced itself to his forehead. _Damn, damn,_ damn! 

The glittering gold smile of the cyborg who held him was the last he remembered of his home at the smelting plant. 

. Logan . 

"Where's Caliban?" he growled, and it was like his stomach and intestines had been tied in knots and then had been shoved up higher into his lungs, it was so hard to breathe. 

The man who's shoulder he gripped so tightly, Pierce, only grinned, gold tooth flashing, like someone who knew he'd already won. 

The confirmation of his fears that followed left him speechless and off-kilter, unable to stop his knees being kicked out from under him, fists and boots landing blow after blow to his face, ribs, back. This couldn't be happening. He couldn't _breathe._ They'd been talking not hours before; arguing, really, but that was most of their conversations these days. Cal couldn't be _dead..._

But he was; Logan knew it all the way down to the pit of dread in his stomach. He thought of Gabriella's eyes this morning, glazed and cloudy, of how her skin had gone to room temperature when his knuckles brushed her cheek. 

No matter how many people he lost, death never lost its sting.


	7. The End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As per request, trigger warnings for death and violence in this chapter.
> 
> Thank you for sticking with this all the way through.

_" But this rough magic_  
_I here abjure, and when I have required_  
_Some heavenly music, which even now I do,_  
_To work mine end upon their senses that_  
_This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff,_  
_Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,_  
_And deeper than did ever plummet sound_  
_I’ll drown my book. "_

\- William Shakespeare's _The Tempest_

... 

_. Caliban ._

He thought he'd stop feeling it after a while, but it never did. The severe and untreated burns covering his face, his hands, rendering him featureless and nigh unrecognizable, plagued him day and night. He dreamed of fire. 

Compared to the burns, the beatings should have been nothing, but they weren't. He felt fragile and helpless as the raucously laughing cyborg thugs knocked him to and fro like an ugly, scabbed-over doll. 

None made him shake quite as much as Pierce, though. Just the sight of his gold-toothed smile had Caliban retreating into some dark, frightened, animal corner of his own mind. 

After he'd woken that first day in an armored security vehicle, he'd seen just that smile, triumphant and cocky, beaming down on him. "Well good morning, sleeping beauty," he'd drawled in his affable Southern twang, and climbed over the backseat to crouch in the trunk, where Caliban lay. "Was beginning to wonder when we'd see those pretty eyes of yours." 

The 'pretty eyes' in question, still damaged from such unprecedented sun exposure, added white halos and trailing sparks to everything Caliban looked at directly. He wondered if his vision would ever return to normal. 

Somehow he doubted he'd live long enough to find out. 

He watched fearfully as Pierce stroked his stubbled chin with his robotic hand, a mimicry of contemplative thought on his face. Caliban noticed a long scratch on Pierce's arm and, observing his glance, Pierce held his forearm out to show him the length of it. 

"Wolvie wasn't too pleased with me when he heard what happened to you," Pierce explained. "Actually, some of the boys are thinking you were _special_ to him, if you catch my drift." 

Caliban glanced away and bit his lip to keep silent. It was hard, resisting the urge to scratch the fried skin on his face. 

"I told them, now that can't be," Pierce continued, unperturbed by his silence. "Is anyone _really_ special to the Wolverine? Surely you couldn't be. I mean... look at you." 

Ouch. He was managing to bruise sore spots without so much as touching him. 

"You know he didn't really love you, Caliban, right?" Pierce explained. "No matter what he told you, you were just a means to an end." 

"You don't know that," Caliban couldn't help himself from speaking up, though his voice felt dry as paper. "Once he finds us he'll shred you to pieces." 

Pierce laughed. "Hey y'all," he called up to the front seat, at whoever was driving. "Did you hear that? Callie-cat thinks old Wolvie's gonna come after us! I'm just shakin' in my boots." 

There was a host of obligatory guffaws from up front; Caliban counted at least four distinctive voices, but he didn't shift to look at them. 

"Wolvie thinks you're dead, honey." Pierce explained, when the laughter died down. And oh, his gold tooth was glinting bright now with the expanse of his grin. "He got awful unsociable about it, too. But he won't be looking for you." 

He sounded so smug that it couldn't be anything but the truth. With his last hope crumbled, Caliban curled further in on himself, in his little trunk-cage. 

"Oh, now, baby, don't cry," Pierce crooned in false sympathy. "That just breaks my achy little heart." 

"You'd have to have one for that to work," Caliban muttered, brushing at his face with his sleeve. The abrasion against his burns made him close his eyes to fight back a whimper. 

Pierce chuckled again, affable for half an instant before he lunged for Caliban and seized him by the neck of his shirt, forcing him forward so that his face collided painfully with the bars of his cage. 

"Where are they, Caliban?" he asked softly, his face only centimeters from Caliban's. He smelled the coffee on his breath; he could have counted his eyelashes. Frozen stiff, he could do little more than take quick, shallow breaths while his heart thundered like a frantic mouse in his hollow chest. 

He could feel them in his head; they weren't far. Logan, and Charles, and the strange little girl. They were moving quickly, but not so fast as to be untrackable. 

"I- I see them, in a convenience store," he said weakly. "Off the I-19. Not forty miles away. It's got a mechanical rocking horse in front." 

It was a lie, but only a partial one. They'd been to such a place an hour ago, and had long since been on their way. It was the most he could do for them, with Pierce staring at him so intently. 

Pierce gently released his shirt and sat back. _"Good_ boy," he praised, in a tone that made Caliban's skin crawl. "You earned yourself a water." 

He rolled a plastic bottle through the bars on Caliban's cage. Caliban resisted the urge to grab it up and drink it immediately. 

"This is gonna be as easy as you make it," Pierce reminded him, before he was crawling back over the divider to the main portion of the van, conveying this new information to the driver. 

Caliban took the water in a slightly-shaking hand, uncapping it carefully and pacing himself with sips. No need to make himself sick. 

The salt in his tears stung the burns on his face.

... 

Something heavy was thrown against the bars of his cage, making them rattle, and Caliban jerked away with a startled yelp. 

A man's dead face stared blankly at him. He looked young, in his mid-twenties at most, with badly-bleached hair. The nametag pinned to his front declared him a Shop-Rite employee by the name of Jackson. 

Caliban covered his mouth with his hand and tried not to stare at the three still seeping bullet-holes that riddled Jackson's chest. 

One of the Reavers, as they called themselves, crawled in after Jackson and gave Caliban a toothy grin. "He wasn't very cooperative," he explained. 

Pierce was in a fury when he returned to the van. "They're gone," he snarled, and slammed the door shut with such violence that the entire vehicle shuddered. "And the tracks've gone cold. Are you _sure_ you gave us the best information you got, Caliban?" 

"I only told you where they _were!"_ Caliban insisted. "They're not very well going to stay for one place for _long,_ now, are they?" 

Pierce stared him down coldly. Friendly he might behave, when it suited him, but the man was cold and calculating as a robot. 

"Why don't you just sit next to your new friend til we dump the body," he finally decided. "And have a good, _long_ think about how many more people you wanna get killed before we try again." 

... 

In dreams, he could see Logan the clearest. 

He knelt in the cage beside Caliban, not smiling but with something soft and giving in his eyes just the same. "Hey Cal," he greeted, as he blinked groggily up at him. He was resting a large, rough hand on Caliban's forehead. "I was starting to miss you." 

"Did they catch you?" Caliban croaked, heart pounding. If Logan had been caught, there wasn't much hope for either of them. 

But Logan only shook his head. "Not yet, bub. You're just dreamin'. Might be a little concussed, too." 

Caliban nodded; that made sense. Sitting up, he went to lean his back against his cage bars, side-by-side with the large mutant. "I don't think I'm to make it through this alive, Logan," he confessed, and there was a tremor of fear in his voice that he couldn't quash. 

"No," Logan shook his head. "Me, neither." 

The more Caliban looked at him, the more he saw that this couldn't be anything but a dream. Logan was clean, in fresh clothes with his hair and beard trimmed; he looked healthier than Caliban had seen him in months. All the same, when he slid their hands together and laced their fingers, it felt real and solid as life. 

"You know what you have to do next," Logan asked gently, squeezing his hand. 

Caliban nodded. "I'm scared," he confessed in a soft whisper. 

Logan considered this a moment, then smiled; that wry grin he always got when Caliban read silly newspaper articles or cleverly-written book passages aloud to him at the breakfast table. "Nah," he said confidently. "You're braver than most people give you credit before. I know there's a fire that burns in here." 

He lightly tapped Caliban's chest with his knuckles. "I'll be seein' you soon, Cal," he promised, and then he was gone. 

When Caliban was dragged roughly from sleep not long after this, with hands of iron and flesh slamming his head and limbs brutally around the van, he was able to endure it quietly. He didn't crack until Pierce used sunlight bounced off a knife's blade directly onto his eyes. 

"They're in Oklahoma City," he gasped, and someone's hand around his throat loosed slightly, enough for him to describe the casino. 

... 

The all-too-familiar sensation of one of Charles' seizures couldn't have been more of a relief. He'd been watching, sickened, through the mounted security cameras in the van as the Reavers stalked the old man and the seemingly-helpless little girl in the hotel room. 

_Please,_ he'd prayed. _Please._ Much as he couldn't bare to see Charles killed like a dog on the street, as heinous as it would be to see the little girl chained and carried off by these monsters, he couldn't tear his eyes away. 

And then he _really_ couldn't- he, and everyone else in and around the casino-slash-hotel were abruptly frozen in place, heads filled with such a ringing as their brains might be melted on the spot. 

_Oh Charles,_ he thought, even as involuntary tears from his constricting lungs filled his eyes. _You clever fox._

The little girl, who'd fallen to the floor when an errant bullet from the intruders breaking the door had grazed her shoulder, was crawling towards the old man. She was moving so slowly that it was only by the stillness of those around her- Charles in his wheelchair before the great window and the multiple armed gunmen frozen in place, their weapons aimed at him- that motion could be detected at all. That, more than anything else, convinced Caliban of her true lineage. She was a small Logan, through and through. 

And, when black and purple specks were dancing before his eyes from lack of oxygen, the _real_ Logan was there, moving as though the weight of the world was crushing him, killing Reavers where they stood. 

Only then did Caliban relax. Logan was here. Charles and the girl- Laura- would be safe; they'd live to see another day. 

... 

He knew he was being manipulated, but he was so tired and hungry, and in so much pain. 

Dr. Rice, with his soothing voice, so different from the barbaric Reavers and that awful Pierce, by talking in his reasonable, cajoling tone, was just so much more pleasant to listen to. He talked to him like he was a _person._ He gave Caliban water, and granola, and looked after the more severe of his burns. And the things he said make a sort of sense. They didn't want to _hurt_ Logan or Charles; they just want to take away the little girl that they had made. Couldn't Caliban see she was _dangerous_ and shouldn't be out in the world? 

Yes, he could see that. She _was_ dangerous and unstable. A miniature Logan without his years of taught self-control. Maybe she'd be better off with people like Dr. Rice to supervise her... 

He knew it was wrong. But he told them anyway. He described the farm house; the cornfield, the horses. He described how Logan and Charles and the little girl were at ease, content; likely easy to catch. 

"And Logan, and Charles, and that farm-house family; they'll be safe, right? Free to go afterwards?" He didn't dare ask if he, too, would be free to go to them as well. He was too valuable; Pierce had said as much when the Reavers got too rough. They needed him to find the other mutant children, to clean up the mess they'd made. 

Dr. Rice promised they would be, with such easy confidence. 

So he lead them right to the house, with its warm lights spilling over the corn, tuning it a brilliant gold. The gentle moonlight caressed him, the breeze cooling his fevered skin. Logan and Charles were so close, and he missed them dreadful. He closed his eyes and imagined he was inside the house with them. 

That was, until Rice and Pierce released something from a towing trailer on the back of one of their vehicles. Something he'd never sensed before. It wasn't human. It was a mutant, and a familiar one at that, but it wasn't _right._ Not right at all. 

When it turned to look at him through the bars in his cage, Caliban shivered and shrank back. It wore Logan's face, but it was no closer to Logan than a wolf or a gun might be. Its eyes were empty, devoid of all thought or soul. It looked right past him, as though he weren't even there. 

And that's when Caliban knew this night could only end in blood. 

They waited until Logan and the man- Will Munson- stepped out before sending the monster- X-24- in. Caliban paced frantically, reached for the lock on his cage with his long fingers; tried to turn the coded dials. 

He felt it, when that _thing_ reached Charles. He felt the pulsing, rocking pain-confusion-pain- _fear_ that was Charles' agonized form, pierced by claws and he collapsed, howling, in his cage, face pressed to the bars. 

"You promised he wouldn't hurt them!" he shouted to Rice, who wasn't listening. 

The stench of blood- human blood- filled the air. The teenage Munson- Caliban saw him cut down from the cameras X-24 wore, played on monitors inside the van. Then the woman. There was no hope, then, if killing civilians on their quest to reclaim the child was hardly a concern. 

And then Logan's face filled the screen, so abruptly that Caliban cried out. He looked so terribly confused. 

X-24 emerged from the house a moment later, blood soaked and carrying a bound Laura like one might carry a bag of groceries. Half-mad from guilt, Caliban beat his face into the bars, feeling nothing. Inside the van the Reavers cheered and congratulated each other, pleased their task was at an end. Rushing from the vehicle, a utility belt was dropped not far from the trunk. A flash of silver caught Caliban's eye. 

He jolted when, with a roar, Logan, feral with grief, was upon X-24. The cloned weapon was forced to drop his cargo to retaliate. It was an unfair battle; Logan was battered, injured, exhausted; this creature was smooth as a well-oiled machine. As the stink of blood spread farther throughout the night, Caliban's long fingers wrapped around the belt and hauled it closer. 

Laura's screams pierced the air; unending, throat-tearing howls of pure fear. An animal trapped and begging for mercy. 

He had done this; to her, to Charles, to the Munson family. He would not do it any longer. He would not be used to hurt anyone else; he would not be a tracker to find the other children. He would take himself out of the equation; give Logan a fighting chance to seize the girl and run. 

As X-24 stabbed his claws into Logan again and again, Caliban stood in his cage and fixed a cold gaze upon Pierce, who, sensing this, turned to look at him. 

"Beware the light," he whispered, a strange smile gracing his lips. And then he pulled the pins from his grenades.


End file.
